Greggman, first off, these resources are great, thank you for making them available!
As for the 2d rasterization vs 3d math question, I've bumped into your philosophy online before and never commented but found it did touch a nerve with me as you suggest. I'm not entirely sure why, but its as much an emotional argument as a logical one.
After I thought about it for a while, I concluded that you have a valuable and interesting point. But every time I read it I keep wondering a couple of things, so since you're here I figured I'd just ask.
First, why deny so absolutely that WebGL is 3D? I've been feeling like your point might have more traction with graphics programmers if it left the question open than claim to close the book. Even though you're right, you need to do your own math, WebGL still does accept 3d data, and it does 3d operations on that data. WebGL enables 3d graphics, and denying that it does that is inherently problematic, isn't it? The argument that amount of prior knowledge necessary to use a library should dictate the category of a library also seems pretty subjective to me, and in my experience doesn't generally hold - not many libraries I use are truly black box libraries that don't require prior knowledge. My personal use of OpenGL has always involved me doing a lot of 3d math myself, just like my personal use of OpenCV requires a lot of prior image processing and computer vision knowledge.
Second, why try to convince the internet that WebGL is 2d and not 3d, as opposed to, say, the Khronos Group? If all the official sources of documentation call WebGL a 3d library, then isn't this argument probably going to be futile and never ending?
As for the 2d rasterization vs 3d math question, I've bumped into your philosophy online before and never commented but found it did touch a nerve with me as you suggest. I'm not entirely sure why, but its as much an emotional argument as a logical one.
After I thought about it for a while, I concluded that you have a valuable and interesting point. But every time I read it I keep wondering a couple of things, so since you're here I figured I'd just ask.
First, why deny so absolutely that WebGL is 3D? I've been feeling like your point might have more traction with graphics programmers if it left the question open than claim to close the book. Even though you're right, you need to do your own math, WebGL still does accept 3d data, and it does 3d operations on that data. WebGL enables 3d graphics, and denying that it does that is inherently problematic, isn't it? The argument that amount of prior knowledge necessary to use a library should dictate the category of a library also seems pretty subjective to me, and in my experience doesn't generally hold - not many libraries I use are truly black box libraries that don't require prior knowledge. My personal use of OpenGL has always involved me doing a lot of 3d math myself, just like my personal use of OpenCV requires a lot of prior image processing and computer vision knowledge.
Second, why try to convince the internet that WebGL is 2d and not 3d, as opposed to, say, the Khronos Group? If all the official sources of documentation call WebGL a 3d library, then isn't this argument probably going to be futile and never ending?